Inmate With Execution On Hold Dies In Prison

June 11, 2000|By Bradley Keoun, Tribune Staff Writer.

Willie Enoch, 46, a Death Row inmate who twice escaped execution--first, when his lawyer challenged physical evidence used in obtaining his conviction, and again when Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois--died Saturday, apparently of natural causes, in the Pontiac Correctional Center.

Enoch was found guilty in the 1983 slaying of a Peoria woman. His 1998 execution was delayed, pending DNA tests on a bloody shirt found near the crime scene. The tests failed to exonerate Enoch, but he was granted another reprieve in February when the state moratorium on executions took effect.

At the time, Enoch had been one of the next in line to be executed.

"He just said he would never go a day before the Lord called him home, and there was nothing man could do about it either way," said his wife, Mary Enoch, 63, an anti-death penalty activist who married Enoch during a ceremony in the prison visitation room in December 1996.

Enoch had a history of circulatory problems and had been taking medication, she said.

Some Death Row inmates Saturday accused prison guards of being slow to respond to Enoch's pleas for medical attention. Enoch began complaining to guards of chest pains about 7:30 a.m. but wasn't taken to the prison infirmary until about 30 minutes later, they said.

Guards "just kept walking by his cell, ignoring him," one Death Row inmate said in a telephone interview. After hearing Enoch's complaints go unanswered, many inmates began banging on steel doors and bars, the inmate said.

Prison officials said the guards responded promptly to Enoch's complaints.

"He was taken to the infirmary immediately," said Nic Howell, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections. "He was distressed on the way, so they stopped en route to give him CPR."

Enoch was pronounced dead in the prison infirmary at 8:30 a.m. A preliminary autopsy showed Enoch died of a blood clot in the lung, said Livingston County Coroner Michael P. Burke. During Enoch's trial in Peoria in the fatal 1983 stabbing of Amanda Kay Burns, prosecutors contended the killer wrapped a shirt around the bloody knife to conceal it. Tests by the Illinois State Police crime lab determined that sweat on the shirt was Enoch's.

He was convicted, sentenced to death and in November 1998, came within 24 hours of being executed when the Illinois Supreme Court granted a stay of his execution until independent DNA tests could be performed on the shirt. But the test results, filed in Peoria County Circuit Court in February 1999, only affirmed the likelihood of Enoch's guilt.

In May 1999, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago and 18 other prominent religious leaders asked the Illinois Supreme Court to grant a stay of Enoch's death sentence, saying the exoneration of several other Death Row inmates had raised doubts about the state's capital-punishment process.

The court rejected that request without comment a month later.

Since Ryan declared the moratorium, Enoch had continued to file appeals, most recently working on an appeal to Ryan for clemency, Mary Enoch said.

"When I talked to him Friday, he said he was so tired from working" on the clemency appeal, she said.